Lingering Mysteries from the 2018 Oscars

Well, another Oscars is behind us: we’ve all come to the realization that we’ve committed the spellings of “Saoirse” and “Chalamet” to memory forever; we’ve collectively Googled “inclusion rider” and “Jennifer Lawrence height”; and we’ve frowned as we realized we should have just picked The Shape of Water in our Oscar pool and not recklessly predicted an upset.

But before we delete the blurry photos we took of our television during the ceremony (at least a dozen of presenter pair Tiffany Haddish and Maya Rudolph) and move on from Sunday night’s festivities, let’s examine some of the lingering mysteries from the 2018 ceremony.

O.K. though, how tall is Jennifer Lawrence actually?

This may have just been a thing on our Twitter feed, but there was a whole lot of chatter when the Red Sparrow star and Jodie Foster, her former The Beaver director, arrived on stage to present the best-actress prize, as the duo—we know, it’s hard to process—are . . . different heights. In reality, Foster, at 5’3”, is only 6 inches shorter than Lawrence, even if it did appear Lawrence was at least a Jacob Tremblay taller than her co-presenter.

And what happened to Foster’s leg?

Foster made her way onto the stage with the aid of crutches, and she promptly joked that her injury was the result of some foul I, Tonya-style play at the hands of Meryl Streep. The real reason was, of course, far less scandalous: Foster’s rep toldPeople that the injury took place when she fell while skiing a few weeks ago.

Speaking of J. Law, why didn’t we see more of her and Emma Stone? (We promise not every single question here is going to involve Jennifer Lawrence.)

During host Jimmy Kimmel’s monologue, a joke was made—who could have imagined it!—about last year’s La La Land-Moonlight best-picture mix-up, at which point the camera cut to last year’s best-actress winner, Emma Stone, in the audience sitting next to one of her best friends, Lawrence. Lawrence mugged for the camera and pointed at Stone, and it seemed a safe bet we would be seeing cutaways to the pair all night, the sort of treatment Rihanna or Beyoncé get when they show up to the V.M.A.s or Grammys. Alas, the pair—seated in the second row just behind Meryl Streep—were barely seen for the rest of the night! A real missed opportunity. (Almost making up for it are all of the photos of Lawrence chatting with various celebrities before the ceremony while holding a glass of wine.)

And no Lawrence-Timothée Chalamet photo op?! (Alright, this really will be the last J. Law one, we promise.)

This year’s breakout Oscar circuit star was undoubtedly the Call Me by Your Name actor, who attended the ceremony with his mother. Recently, Lawrence shared that she is as infatuated with Chalamet as the rest of the universe has become, commenting—in typical wry, J. Law fashion, “[I’m] buttering him up like a pig for slaughter . . . I’m going to swing right in there as soon as he’s, like, 30.” But somehow the pair did not cross paths last night! Another missed J. Law-related opportunity, though one we imagine will be rectified at some Hollywood event soon.

What was the deal with that Wrinkle in Time screening situation?

There is nothing Jimmy Kimmel enjoys more than a prank, so it was no surprise he halted the proceedings midway through to corral a slew of stars (Gal Gadot, Lupita Nyong’o, Margot Robbie, Ansel Elgort, Armie Hammer, and more) across the street to crash a screening of A Wrinkle in Time (some savvy Disney cross-promotion). Once the stars entered the screening, there was general pandemonium, as Hammer and Elgort operated hot dog rockets and Gadot addressed the theater, repeating that this was “better than the Oscars.” There are a lot of lingering questions we have here: firstly, not to be overly Conspiracy Theorist about this, but if you are being invited to a special advance screening of a buzzy movie directly across from the Oscars during the Oscars—and one hosted by a famously prank-happy host, no less—you probably know something is going to be up, right?! We imagine a few of the audience members turned to each other after and said, “That was it? We thought we’d at least get a Meryl Streep selfie out of this . . . ” Secondly, is a movie screening interrupted by some hot dogs launched at you by handsome movie stars “better than the Oscars”? Debatable. Thirdly, it’s one thing to tell all the winners to keep their acceptance speeches short if the rest of the ceremony is going to run with extreme efficiency, but, from a producing standpoint, this seemed . . . a confusing choice.

Where was Reese Witherspoon?

On a completely different note, we were hoping (and almost, given her current Queen of Hollywood status, expecting?!) Witherspoon to attend, and the presence of her Big Little Lies co-stars Nicole Kidman and Laura Dern only had us further missing her in the crowd. (Thankfully, Witherspoon live-tweeted the proceedings; she particularly enjoyed Rudolph and Haddish’s banter.)

And lastly, is it true Prince Harry and Meghan Markle were going to present!?

On Friday, reputable gossip source Lainey Gossip reported the engaged couple had been in talks with the Oscar producers about presenting during the ceremony, and that discussions had advanced far enough that there were “calls back and forth between teams” and “early fashion queries made.” Ultimately, Lainey’s sources told her that “security and logistics” quashed the proposal—it’s not like those two have any major event coming up in London to be worrying about, or anything!—but it’s certainly an all-around disappointment that we did not get to see them hobnob with Hollywood’s elite.

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